Year 9 Future Makers Camp

Future Makers Camp

On Tuesday 15th March after the long weekend our Year 9 students hopped on a bus for the almost 4 hour trip to the Outdoor School at Bogong. In the first few days students went rock climbing, abseiling and did a few short hikes as they prepared for their 5 day bush walk on the Bogong High Plains. 

Two groups had decided on very different trip itineraries, with one starting at Falls Creek and staying close to the Falls Creek Resort while the other started at Mt. Hotham and had plans to walk across some mountain razor backs to get across to Falls Creek. Students had packs ready with tents, sleeping bags, clothes and enough food to last them for 5 days. 

Before the journey began we had some disappointment with Covid ending the trip for several of our students. The rest of the group soldiered on and though many were nervous and apprehensive we headed up our respective Mountains and with packs on we started our journey's Saturday morning. 

My group started on Mt. Hotham after another long bus journey up the Mountain. At the top we had magnificent views of Mt. Feathertop and we were excited to get our journey underway. After a short walk and a few complaints about how heavy our packs were we stopped for lunch. At lunch our navigators for the day Jordy Rasmussen and Lachlan Joyce got their bearings and we were ready to put some km's behind us. Then disaster struck.

Sitting at the top of Mt. Hotham enjoying our lunch was when a few girls came to us and said they were not feeling well. Before we got into our hike we thought we had better RAT test. Unfortunately our worst fears came true and we had some positive results. The tough decision was then made to cancel our journey and arrange a trip home. We took a small group on a short hike while the bus came to get us. We returned to Bogong and stayed Saturday night. On Sunday before leaving we went on one more short hike to see a beautiful waterfall. After another long bus trip and a stop at McDonald's we returned to Rochester about 5pm Sunday afternoon.

Big thankyou to staff for all their efforts getting the trip organised and massive thanks to families for their understanding of the difficulties we faced and the decisions we had to make. Wasn't how we hoped it would go but hopefully everyone still had a memorable journey.